NYC Closes Second Public School This Year Due To COVID-19 Outbreak

New York City has closed its second public school due to COVID-19, after an outbreak struck P.S. 166 Henry Gradstein in Queens, on the border of Astoria and Long Island City. The elementary school will now go fully remote for ten days.

Parents learned of the closure Tuesday afternoon via an email sent by the school’s principal Jessica Geller. The closure will go into effect Wednesday morning.

According to COVID-19 data compiled by the New York State Department of Health, 19 students and 3 staff have tested positive at the school since November 2nd. The uptick brings Henry Gradstein’s total case count for the current school year to 34, meaning its tally has nearly tripled in the last seven days.

The school was listed as “under investigation” earlier this week on the city’s Department of Education’s Daily COVID Case Map. As of Monday evening, nearly half of the school’s 58 classrooms were already facing some form of closure. Eleven classrooms were completely closed due to the coronavirus, while another 12 were partially closed, meaning some unvaccinated close contacts of infected students and staff were learning from home. Classes were held Tuesday.

Spokesperson Nathaniel Styer said the Department of Education was ready to support students and staff through the transition. “Every student at PS 166 has a device so they can engage in live remote learning, and we are working closely with [the] school community,” Styer added.

Per education department policy, the school remained open during the investigation, which was also confirmed by emails sent to parents by school administrators.

“This school would have been closed two weeks ago,” under last year’s criteria, said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers. “We know the spread is coming from inside that building.”

Last year, school buildings were shuttered if two or four cases could be traced to in-school transmission. For the current term, the city’s Department of Education said it would only shut schools down if there was evidence of “widespread transmission.” The city has not described this threshold in detail, but health commissioner Dr. Dave Chokshi roughly defined it earlier this fall as “multiple sources of infection in multiple spaces or cohorts within a school.”

The news comes just days after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for 5- to 11-year-olds. Children ages 5 to 17 have been leading the city in weekly COVID rates since late September.

Karyn Pavich, whose three children all attend Henry Gradstein, said parents began sharing news of their kids’ COVID symptoms and diagnoses last week. She has kept her kids home from school since their COVID vaccine appointments on Thursday, wary of the rising case counts. Akin to adults, a child is considered fully vaccinated two weeks after their second dose.

“A lot of my friends kept their kids home,” she said. “This is scary.”

According to the school’s building ventilation report, all of its 58 classrooms have functioning windows. But 37 classrooms lack supply fans, which help bring in fresh air. Windows alone may not provide enough ventilation to mitigate COVID-19 risk for students and staff, experts say. According to state estimates, 894 students are enrolled, supported by 81 staff members.

“We’re so close to having them fully vaccinated that it doesn’t seem like a good idea to throw them into so much risk right now,” Pavich said.

The Horan School in East Harlem was the first campus to shut its doors this school year due to COVID-19, after close to two dozen staff members tested positive for the coronavirus.

Another Queens school, P.S. 169 Bay Terrace in Bayside, is also under investigation for a COVID-19 outbreak, with 17 of its classrooms partially closed.

P.S. 166 Henry Gradstein is slated to reopen on November 22nd.

This story was updated with a response from the New York City Department of Education.